News Article

Let's Dissect These Four Minutes Of Resistance 3 Gameplay

We've already established just how brilliant Resistance 3 looks in trailer form, but some quick slices of gameplay footage aren't really the best indication of how a game looks (and plays) without the fancy editing

Eurogamer.pt's got their hands on four minutes of Resistance 3 gameplay footage (without the editing). We've embedded the gameplay in a friendly format above. Let's watch it together and pull apart everything we see.

a) The overall graphical composition is stunning in a Killzone/Uncharted manner. Resistance 2 tended to look very static and devoid of life in places. Resistance 3 looks alive though. That's probably partly due to the excellent weather effects that are taking place in the environment. The visuals will probably be criticised for being too brown, but it kinda fits the context of the game. So long as there's variety (which we know there is), we're fine with that.

b) The way the Chimera move around the environment is very cool. The jet-pack enemies in particular look brilliant, squatting down and then leaping high into the air. The animation doesn't look final yet (there's still plenty of development time to polish), but it's getting there. It really adds personality to the opponents.

c) When shooting a Chimera with a jet-pack, there's a brilliant explosion effect and the smoke filters into the wind very naturally. Even based on this very short snippet, Resistance 3 may just have the best wind we've ever seen in a video game.

d) The Chimera look like they're pretty smart. Resistance 3 looks to have more in common with a Halo than Call Of Duty. Based on this footage, battles appear to take place in large, open environments where the AI flank and attack from different angles. This doesn't appear to be a corridor shooter. Perhaps most refreshingly, the AI aren't focusing all fire on the player, opting to take on AI team-mates too.

e) It's nice to see a fresh looking HUD when so many games look exactly the same these days. There's a steam-punk aesthetic to the Weapon Wheel and health progress bar. It also looks like regenerating health is gone, which is a bold (but refreshing) move from Insomniac.

f) The boss fight looks a little bit derivative, but visually the whole set-piece is on a different level from anything we saw in the previous Resistance games. The wind effects in particular are absolutely stunning. We're comfortable saying it looks as good as Killzone or Uncharted. Nice to see there's an emphasis on making use of the Weapon Wheel to take the boss down. Would be fantastic fun in co-op.